Ken Triplett, 54, you're an idiot....... and now you've earned a special place on our website for falsely using our title and reputation. You are a pathetic liar and fraud.
Team Sergeant
Neighbors worry East Mesa flag display will lead to violenceBy Ashley Meeks Sun-News reporter
Posted: 09/10/2009 12:00:00 AM MDT
Military veteran Victor Chavez, 63, walks in protest Wednesday... (Sun-News photo by Norm Dettlaff)
LAS CRUCES - East Mesa residents said Wednesday they are concerned about the potential for a neighbor's political demonstration to turn violent.
Ken Triplett, 54, has displayed an upside-down American flag, which symbolizes distress, beneath a four-swastika-adorned Nazi flag called the "Fuhrer Flag" since the Labor Day weekend.
Las Cruces Police visited Triplett's residence Monday evening after two upset neighbors showed up outside to see his flag display.
Triplett, who was mowing his lawn, "obtained a very large long rifle with a scope on it and carried it around his front yard as if to flaunt it" but did not point it at anyone, according to the police report. After officers arrived on scene, three unnamed neighbors arrived, telling police that Triplett "said that he was heavily armed and that if he had to, he would strap bombs to himself and go to Washington, D.C. to take care of the government," according to police reports.
Sgt. Kiri Daines, who responded to the weapon call, said police continue to pay attention to the situation on Reynolds Drive but that Triplett isn't considered a suspect in any crime.
"We're aware of the situation, but right now, he's just exercising his First Amendment rights," Daines said, "as long as he doesn't take action or take a significant step toward that action."
Reached via cell phone Wednesday, Triplett said his protest was against unjust wars and a government that failed to take adequate care of the elderly and homeless while bailing out banks and outsourcing jobs. And if his neighbors didn't recognize that, they're "sheep," he said.
"I have nothing against this country. I'm not racist or communist," said Triplett, who said that he served in the Army from 2003-2006 as a Special Forces sergeant and that he planned to leave the country and give up his citizenship. While he said he "loves" the flag, he also spoke favorably of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, saying the government "should have given him a Congressional Medal of Honor. In my opinion, he didnÍt do enough."
As for his display, Triplett said his flags don't represent Adolf Hitler, but what he believes is communism: "I'm flying them until one of the politicians comes and talks to me. Any of them."
He added, "Eventually, I'll take the flag down, but I want to make a point."
Area veterans hope Triplett will remove the flags soon.
"We're doing everything we can to get that taken down," said neighbor Greg Baker, 32, who served in the Marine Corps' 3rd Infantry Battalion from 1996 to 2000.
Baker and his father-in-law reported seeing Triplett with the gun on Monday and called Triplett's remarks about strapping bombs to himself, reported by his neighbors, "a terroristic threat."
"I am very concerned with the possibility of violence. Not only that, I'm very concerned about the Jewish people, the Jewish community in this town, because that is a slap in the face they don't need," Baker said. "He can run a Rebel Cross up there for all I care, but (flying the U.S. flag) upside down and below something else, that's what irritates me to no end."
Chaparral resident John Baird, 38, a 20-year Army veteran who worked as a Patriot missile operator and served in the first Gulf War, said he worried about the threat Triplett posed to his neighbors if the situation continued.
"That entire neighborhood is littered with veterans and if he has that much animosity built up ... I feel like he's a threat,î Baird said. "Never doubt a barking dog. It's going to bite - and this dog's barking."
Navy veteran Donnie Brainard, 41, who served in the Navy from 1987 to1993, with two years on the U.S.S. Ranger aircraft carrier, said he was "disgusted" by Triplett's flags and comments."As a veteran, I feel immensely proud of my country and what it's done to me, and God, to fly the flag with the swastika is grotesque," Brainard said. "It actually sounds like this guy's kind of dangerous."
Viktoria Szolnoki, 32, Brainard's girlfriend, said Triplett's political ideas seemed more "mistaken." Szolnoki, a native of Zalaegerszeg, Hungary, who left in 1999, grew up under a communist system that she said reformed after the 1970s.
"The swastika is definitely not a sign of communism. The sign of communism is a sickle and hammer, if you remember the old Soviet flag," Szolnoki said. "In communism, actually, the elderly were very well taken care of in Hungary. The health care was always free. You got free spa tickets and you could stay at the hospital by the hot springs if you had arthritis, and children's education was excellent."
The situation sparked an additional protest Wednesday.
Victor Chavez, 63, a neighbor and disabled Army and Navy veteran, wheeled his walker and carried two American flags up and down the sidewalk outside Triplett's residence for hours.
"I really am ashamed of what's going on here," said Chavez, who was injured after being hit on guard duty while serving in Korea and said it was hard to believe that a fellow veteran would make such a display. "I think that's probably the biggest insult (Triplett) could give us (veterans). If he's going to protest, I think we should protest, too."
Chavez said it was "hard to believe" a fellow veteran would make such a display, but added, referring to Timothy McVeigh, who served during the Gulf War and aspired to join Army Special Forces, "that guy who blew up (the federal building in) Oklahoma (City), he served in Iraq, too."
Victor Mu-oz, 45, a neighbor who worked anti-tank assault in the Marines from 1984 to 1987, said he was worried about where the situation on Reynolds Drive might end, especially as a father of small children.
"If you have some dissent with the government, there are certainly other ways of going about it without disgracing the flag," Mu-oz said. "I'm concerned about the safety of the neighborhood because if you get some real radical chain concerned about that swastika ... I've got to worry about someone retaliating. I don't want to see any trouble."
Ashley Meeks can be reached at
ameeks@lcsun-news.com; (575) 541-5462.
http://www.lcsun-news.com/las_cruces-news/ci_13304848
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